


This isn’t love, lover

by myoue



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Victor is a disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: Yuuri goes on dates sometimes but none of them are ever with Victor. Still, it's Victor who falls in love with him—too easily, too fast, and too terribly hard.





	This isn’t love, lover

**Author's Note:**

> _Ceci n'est pas l’amour_ \- you know, like 'this is not a pipe'?
> 
> sometimes i'll say that i'm most content with my writing right now at this point in my life, and that i've struggled in the past with putting out mediocre things that i'll hate immediately after. but the truth is i still struggle with that even now. it's not something that you can just grow out of, at least as far as i'm aware. what i CAN say is that i've become so used to this process that i think i've learned to see the signs. i'll ditch something faster. i'll stop when i start becoming even a little bored. frankly, i don't have the time or the patience to look back and console myself for writing shit. maybe it's impossible to feel 100% satisfied with anything, and maybe that percentage slowly goes down the longer my writing sits there, but feeling good about something as soon as i put it out (and for as long as possible after that) is probably my goal

There’s nothing special about Yuuri Katsuki; at least, that’s what Yuuri Katsuki himself would tell you if you ever made the mistake of holding him to some arbitrary standard. He wakes up in the morning just like everyone else—Victor knows this, of course—he eats, and goes to the bathroom like the simplest microorganism. Sometimes, on occasion, Yuuri likes to variate the pattern—go to the bathroom first, then eat, and then be consumed in all-encompassing mundanity by falling asleep wherever he is. But who doesn’t like a little spice in their life?

Victor can’t help but disagree. There are things that simply can’t be observed by the person in question, the real image of oneself being so far out of reach, as far out of sight as it is to see yourself without a mirror or a camera or a reflection off a body of standstill water.

And Victor doesn’t disagree that he also sees things through his own filter—a very fine pair of glasses tinted rose-coloured—that, if someone were to ask him very nicely to take them off so he can see things for what they really are, he would rightly insist that these glasses might as well be permanently attached to his face.

-

Yuuri’s boxer briefs are black like his hair.

It takes Victor a while to notice this until it’s starkly in contrast with the white dress shirt Yuuri pulls on over his shoulders to button up at the front before he even puts on a pair of pants. The shirt is so long, the boxer briefs peek out just beneath the hem, and it has Victor stroking his chin all the while, squinting in fond admiration.

“That's mine,” he remarks with a sleep-addled croak and a bit of an amused hum, referring to the shirt and not the boxer briefs. “Isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Yuuri says, finishing doing the last button and then looking around the room to find that pair of black jeans he’d set out somewhere but now seems to have disappeared. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Mm. Thanks.”

Victor stretches out lazily across his own bed, arms shoved under the pillow, staring sideways. He can’t help himself thinking Yuuri looks really good, abominably good; Victor doesn’t have the heart to tell him the pants are camouflaged against the dark blue sheets of Yuuri’s bed. The closed blinds over their window don’t help, making it seem like night, even though it’s well past noon.

It’s things like this that have Victor suffering sometimes, whether Yuuri’s aware of it or not. Yuuri only notices certain things when it’s convenient for him to. And because of this, Victor thinks about it often, about the unfairness of the circumstances that causes Yuuri to do things like wear Victor’s shirt, draping and hanging loose on him, while also not wearing pants as if wholly unconcerned of the effect it has on others around him—namely, Victor, his romantic-suffering roommate on this fine Saturday afternoon.

It’s an ungodly image. It’s unholy. But Victor has never been much of a religious man.

And then, a stunning thought crosses Victor’s mind: if Yuuri can’t find his pants, he might end up taking a pair of Victor’s instead to go along with Victor’s shirt. Oh, how miraculous indeed. How the stars align like this.

“If you don’t put your contacts in now, you’ll be late,” Victor murmurs, yawning, from the comfort of his warm bed sheets. If he can distract Yuuri into the bathroom, his plan might just work.

“Crap, you’re right.” Yuuri hurries off to the bathroom, bare legs and all.

It does, to a certain degree, feel like Victor is taking advantage of the circumstances even if he tries to convince himself he’s the real victim here.

He doesn’t tell Yuuri just how much he appreciates the view sometimes. And not because it would lead to some awkward conversations, nor is Victor afraid that some rift will come between them should certain things be brought up. He simply takes things for how they are, letting Yuuri waltz around the room if that’s what he likes to do.

Life is comfortable as it is, despite the heartache and the minor emotional suffering and all that—but Victor can’t complain, really.

“Did you want me to pick something up for you on the way back?” Yuuri calls from the bathroom. His voice sounds slightly strained, like he’s standing on the tips of his toes, leaning far over the sink to try to get his contacts in while as close to the mirror as possible.

“No?” Victor says. “Why, did I say I wanted something?”

“I don’t know, did you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I don’t remember, either.”

“...Then I guess we’re good.”

“ _Damn_.”

Victor’s not sure if that last comment is because neither of them have good memories, or if Yuuri had managed to drop his contact in the sink or poked himself in the eye or something. It isn’t often that Yuuri will opt for contacts so he isn’t quite used to putting them in with any amount of speed yet.

“If I remember, I’ll text you,” Victor says, sinking himself back into the bed thinking he might just stay here for the rest of the day. He doesn’t think there was anything he wanted anyway. Yuuri hums.

When he comes back into the room, he opens up the curtains, letting the light cascade in and causing Victor to curl up further into the blankets.

“There they are,” he hears Yuuri say faintly.

By the time Victor’s eyes adjust to the light, cracking open above the curls of the blankets, Yuuri is putting on the pair of pants off his bed—his own, sadly.

Damn, Victor thinks. Sharing shirts is one thing, but it was a long shot to think any of his pants would fit Yuuri anyway. In another world, in another universe, Yuuri will wear a full body’s worth of Victor’s clothes. He’ll hold out hope for that beautiful image, no matter how unlikely it is to happen.

But here in this reality, Yuuri tucks Victor’s shirt into his own pants, rolling the sleeves up to his elbows. After running his hand through his hair one last time, a movement that Victor feels is illegal in all forms, he turns to Victor.

And Victor stares back at him.

“How do I look?” Yuuri does a little twirl.

And this right here is why Victor doesn’t beat himself up too much over taking advantage of the circumstances. Because Yuuri so often invites his gaze, trusting Victor to give him an honest opinion. Though, it might just be out of formality than anything else, maybe just to make sure there isn’t anything glaringly out of place, considering if he really wanted some actual advice on how he looked he wouldn’t bother asking the person that says pretty much the same thing every time.

“You look good,” Victor responds, because he means that now at this moment in time, but he also means it always, because he can’t ever find it in himself to see any sort of flaws ever when it comes to Yuuri.

...Handsome.

The more Victor stares, the more the feeling ingrains itself deep into his chest, the sight in front of him on its way to a permanent spot in his memory. He thinks about where his shirt has been, how it would cling to him in certain places as it now clings to Yuuri. It doesn’t look like it even belongs to Victor anymore, Yuuri has made it his own, even though Victor had been wearing it himself just the other day. It’s probably why it was lying around conveniently enough for Yuuri to pick it up.

Yuuri smiles right then, laughter bubbling up at the back of his throat, enough to make Victor pull the blanket up to cover the bottom half of his face when he begins to get too dazzled. He wants to say things like that a dozen times, a million more times, if it gets Yuuri to do that again and again.

“Mmm… you’re only saying that because I’m wearing your shirt though, aren't you?” Yuuri says, teasing through a smile.

“Yeah… you know—my clothes make anyone look two hundred percent better than normal.”

“Oh. _Oh_. So, I look worse every other day in my own clothes?”

“If you would just let me pick out a few pieces for you...”

“Why? When I can just take yours if I feel like looking Victor-esque.”

“...not all your shirts need to be blue pinstripe—did you just say _Victor-esque?_ ”

“Make sure you eat something, okay?” And then Yuuri grabs for his jacket along with his keys and wallet.

Victor decides to let it go. “Mmhm…”

Perhaps, after all, Yuuri is only looking for that assurance, that vocalized approval, rather than any real critique, even though it’s never any surprise to either of them that there is always zero real critique coming from Victor of any kind. Which is fine. Victor doesn’t mind.

“Alright, see you later.”

“Have fun on your date,” Victor calls just before Yuuri heads out the door, enough to make him pause, throw back one last smile at Victor, before heading out.

Of course, Victor says that with true sincerity. In no way would he purposely vouch for Yuuri to have a bad time with whoever he’s with—that would only make Victor feel awful. Thinking of Yuuri feeling awful makes Victor feel awful.

But at the same time, Victor can’t lie to himself. There aren’t any other extraneous feelings.

This isn’t the first time Yuuri’s been out with someone and it probably won’t be the last. Not that these one-off dates happen often, maybe every once in awhile. Victor’s not even sure if they’re of the romance-kind, either. They could just be platonic hang-outs, friendly get-togethers. Yuuri never differentiates or specifies what he means every time he mentions he’s busy tonight or tomorrow or next Saturday because he’s going on a date.

It’s strange, but despite that Victor always has a certain degree of confidence that he doesn’t have to worry, that whoever it is Yuuri’s with, no matter what happens, that nothing will come out of these dates. It’s possibly misguided, possibly wilfully ignorant of the fact that Yuuri has his own life and can make his own choices. Victor has absolutely no say in it.

But it doesn’t ever seem to matter. Deep down, Victor believes with annoyingly optimistic conviction—or perhaps cynical?—that nothing will ever change in the end. He holds onto this with disturbing, everlasting strength. A kind of blind faith. As he’s been doing so for years already.

It takes Victor another hour to actually get himself out of bed to make something to eat, when he’s sure that by now Yuuri has to have already met up with the person.

Victor doesn’t actually know what they’re doing. Movie? Shopping? Who knows. He doesn’t know what Yuuri usually does on these dates, either.

For how long Victor’s been aware of them happening, he has little knowledge on anything else besides the fact that it’s, well, a date in and of itself. He doesn’t even know if it’s with the same person every time. He’d always assumed it was someone different just from the infrequency of the dates and the fact that Yuuri never ever mentions anything close to sounding like he’s going steady with someone…

It doesn’t feel good thinking about it so Victor doesn’t think about it.

After lugging himself to the kitchen, Victor’s in the middle of making himself a pot of coffee when he realizes they’re out of milk save for a few drops. Whoever finished it forgot to throw it out. Victor purses his lips; he has a feeling it was himself.

He walks back across the floor, picking up his phone to text Yuuri.

 _More milk_ , he says.

And despite Yuuri being in the middle of a date, doing movie-shopping-who-knows, Victor gets an answer back almost immediately.

_I knew we needed something!_

So, Victor drinks his coffee black with sugar, both bitter and sweet, a taste he finds he doesn’t mind all that much.

-

Yuuri is back before dinnertime, before the sun has started to set, as if saying that the date wasn’t worth a couple more hours. Poor guy. Or girl.

It definitely doesn't have Victor feeling any feelings of elated relief nor of expectation knowing that things would turn out like this. He continues to watch TV with his feet up, black coffee with just sugar long gone, even as the mug, with ‘Victory’ written on it instead of ‘Victor’ because Yuuri thought it was funny, remains finished and empty on the coffee table.

Yuuri sets a plastic bag on the floor, then on second thought moves it to the coffee table, nudging it into Victor’s feet. “Heeere,” he says.

“Put it in the fridge. Come on, don’t be lazy,” Victor chides, nudging the bag right back with his toes, threatening to throw it right off the table. Yuuri’s only been out for a few hours, he can’t be that tired. Says Victor who’s been sitting on the couch all afternoon.

Off to the side, Yuuri shrugs out of his jacket, bits of snow still stuck to the fur hood. Victor’s pristine white shirt underneath remains looking as good as ever on him.

Yuuri’s face pulls into a teasing pout. “Thought you’d want to eat it now?”

Victor stops trying to edge the bag off the table. “Eat it?”

While Yuuri goes to put his jacket away in the closet, Victor’s curiosity is piqued, sitting up to rifle through the bag which is very clearly not milk-shaped.

“It’s cheesecake,” Yuuri answers for him. “There’re strawberries on it. You like strawberries.”

“I do, yeah.”

He shuffles on back, kneeling on the floor next to the box with a soft-looking off-white cheesecake. Very deeply-coloured fresh strawberries decorate the top in a beautiful arrangement. Yuuri is in awe himself staring at the cake. “Wow, it looks even nicer than I thought it’d be. It’s Japanese cheesecake so it’s lighter and fluffier than the average cheesecake, kind of eggy. In a good way! I know you don’t like heavy stuff.”

Victor brings a hand up to wipe at the stray bits of snow and wet lining the ends of Yuuri’s bangs. Yuuri’s in such a terrible hurry to have some impromptu cake, and Victor only vaguely listens to his ramblings, watching instead the way his eyes sparkle, oddly easy to see now without the frames covering up half his face, lips pulling into a half-smile every other word when explaining his sudden great idea to get cake on the way home, right before the stores close. He looks so soft up close. Victor’s distracted.

He only realizes Yuuri’s staring at him from the stretch of silence that suddenly surfaces.

“Oh,” Victor lets out.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, I was just—What’s all this… for?” Victor says once Yuuri starts muttering again about a knife and fork and plates.

Then Yuuri is up again within seconds, running off back to the kitchen, before calling back, “For your birthday! Obviously. _That’s_ what I…” He trails off. Victor can hear cutlery and plates clinking. “Well, anyway.”

“Oh,” Victor says again, surprised, chest warming. “It's early.”

“It’s never too early for cake.”

Did Yuuri cut his date short because of this? He couldn’t have. Victor can’t stop the smile from creeping onto his face once he knows Yuuri can’t see it. He feels a little bad for the guy now. Or girl.

While Yuuri’s busy, Victor carefully takes the cake out of the box, his mouth watering already. He’d had a bit of toast earlier but he’s suddenly hungry again seeing the glossed strawberries and the smooth cheese. Yuuri—he always knows exactly what to get, even though they’d never discussed cheesecake in particular to much depth before this.

“Did you get the milk?” Victor asks offhandedly.

There’s a beat. “...Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, no. I forgot… sorry.”

Victor snorts when Yuuri comes sliding back to the floor, setting everything down on the table. Victor waves his hand. “That’s alright. We can get it tomorrow. I’ve always wanted milk for my birthday. It’ll probably be the best birthday present I’ve had in awhile. Besides this mug, of course.”

Yuuri shakes his head, handing Victor the knife handle-side first, which Victor takes. “ _No_. This cake here is your birthday present. The milk will be your _Christmas_ present. Also, the mug was your Christmas present too. I can’t believe you’re mixing up my treasured gifts like this.”

“I forgot stores won't be open tomorrow, actually.”

“Oh. Damn.”

Yuuri’s face twists into something again, like he’s put himself into yet another corner after just coming out of one. It’s really fine, Victor wants to say. They’re not in dire need of milk or anything.

A lot of people with birthdays on or near major holidays tend to be pretty unhappy about it because it means doubling up the events into a single present, and holidays tend to take precedence over birthdays. It doesn’t matter how important or famous you are, no one is as good as Christmas.

But Victor quite likes having his birthday on Christmas Day. It feels like everyone everywhere is celebrating him, a random guy’s birthday, at the same time, hundreds of thousands of multicoloured lights lining the streets wherever he goes. He can selfishly apply the holiday cheer to his own birthday and pretend this anniversary of his birth means more than it does.

Victor carves into one of the strawberries, slicing down the centre of the cake. “How was your date?” he asks conversationally. Yuuri stares very intently at the cake.

“Fine.”

Victor looks up, measuring the knife against how big Yuuri wants the slice to be. But Yuuri only gives him a pointed look that says ‘ _the first piece is yours_.’

So, Victor cuts into it. “Did you have fun?”

“Yep.”

“What did you do?”

He lays the piece onto his plate, measuring the next one out for Yuuri and cutting into it when Yuuri nods at him.

“Pretty curious about my date today? You’re not usually.”

“Am I?” Victor gives a smile that says he really doesn’t mean to pry if Yuuri doesn’t want him to. He drops Yuuri’s piece of cake on the plate Yuuri holds out to him. “Must be the Christmas cheer,” Victor surmises. In what way that relates, though, is something Victor can't answer.

“Do you like the cake?” Yuuri says instead.

Oh, right.

Victor bites into the cake finally, feeling the moist cream and the sweet cheese wash over his tongue in a taste wholly unfamiliar to him. It’s just as Yuuri said—it’s spongy, light, airy. Not the typical heaviness at all of cheesecake. It feels like he could eat tons and tons of this and never get full.

Victor practically keens. “It’s _so_ good. Oh my god. You were right—it just, it melts in my mouth. It really is light and eggy.”

Yuuri seems to let out a breath. “Ah, I’m glad you like it! Hold on.”

He gets up again, heading to the kitchen, coming back swiftly with a bottle and two champagne glasses.

“I didn’t know we had that!” Victor exclaims.

“I hid it way in the back of the fridge where you wouldn’t see.” Yuuri grins, pouring out half a glass each of champagne, handing one over to Victor.

He clinks his glass to Victor’s, gazing at him with an unquenchable look. It’s coy but well-meaning.

“Happy birthday, alright?”

Victor takes a sip, not nearly drunk, not nearly enough to be buzzed even, but the night feels young.

“Thanks.” He reaches out again, tucks a sticking-up strand of Yuuri’s hair back in place after all the running back and forth he’s been doing. And Yuuri lets him do it, as always, wordlessly. “It’s early though, technically,” Victor says. Not that he’s complaining, really.

Yuuri takes a sip, too. “I know, I know. But if we celebrate both Christmas and Christmas Eve, shouldn’t we also celebrate your birthday _and_ the Eve of your birthday?”

Victor laughs, the champagne and cake already feeling its way through him. “I don’t think it works like that!”

But Yuuri is charismatically insistent after only the littlest bit of champagne. “Christmas, you see, is overrated anyway, don’t you think? Why is it so important that we have to have two days about it?” He shrugs, downing the rest of his glass in one gulp. “One day to celebrate it and one informal one to celebrate _before_ it happens? Not to mention the whole month of December is essentially Christmas month. Naaaah, I’m not on board.”

“They start celebrating Christmas practically right after Halloween,” Victor mentions.

“Right! Sometimes right after summer.”

“And if they’re going to have Christmas Eve, they should make it a stat holiday, at least.”

The hand that doesn’t have the glass in it places itself on Victor’s, with Yuuri saying, staring into Victor’s eyes almost hypnotically, “You really get me, you know?”

Victor’s nearly rendered speechless, smiling sympathetically once he gets his bearings, rubbing a soothing thumb to the underside of Yuuri’s palm.

Without regard, Yuuri will dig into another slice of cake the moment he finishes the last bite of his first, drinking down three quarters of the champagne bottle by himself.

The only thing that Victor can be sure of is that Yuuri’s not doing this because it’s the eve of Christmas. He makes this abundantly clear by chanting birthday wishes over and over, at the top of every hour when he can, forgetting exactly what time it is throughout the night once he starts doing it every ten minutes, until he’s finally slurring his _official_ _happy birthday_ into Victor’s shoulder when they're hunched together on the couch by the time the clock strikes midnight of the 25th.

He's pretty sure Yuuri’s not as drunk as he could be. Victor’s seen him handle much more than this and had still been conscious enough to do a lot of things drunk people probably shouldn't be able to do at that point.

But he can’t help believing Yuuri wholeheartedly when he says the things that he does, even whilst pre-drunk, or drunk on feelings, however you decide to look at it. It’s not so much if it would make practical sense or not to simply forget about Christmas, just that Yuuri says it with such motivation, such unrelenting honesty. It’s like he really couldn’t give less of a damn about Christmas that he’d go out with someone on a date on Christmas Eve and then abruptly cut it short just to come home and have cake with Victor because it's the eve of his birthday.

As farfetched as it is, it has Victor actually believing that he could compete with Christmas itself, not so much with any of Yuuri’s other dates themselves, which is a strange and sobering feeling, but not altogether as inane as it should probably feel.

-

As of late, Yuuri doesn't really have a distinctive smell anymore.

Or if he does, Victor barely notices it and can't tell what it is with as much certainty as he was able to back when they'd first met. Their scents have mingled together after years of cohabitation and the rampant sharing of each other’s clothes—often unwarranted, mostly fine, very fine actually, on Victor’s part.

His shirt sits forgotten on a chair into the month of January until he discovers it hidden under a pile of other clothes to put in the laundry.

It's the first wash of the new year so he might as well put everything in, but he gives the shirt a quick sniff anyway just to see whether it really needs to go in or if it's still possibly good. He doesn’t want to overload it.

The stench of alcohol and cake from those few nights ago come back to him. Oh, it's _this_ white shirt. Victor has a lot of white shirts that he can barely keep track of. But that isn't what punches him in the gut when he takes a second closer whiff near the collar.

There’s something else that lingers, a sweetness, that immediately takes Victor back years and years before, when he’d first been introduced to Yuuri on a group date through a mutual friend. They didn't really talk much back then, only seeing each other occasionally, because it didn’t at first seem as if their personalities matched all that well.

It was just an every-now-and-again thing—they’d nod or smile at each other.

Whenever it happened that their mutual friend would leave early or stay late or decide to go home another way, Victor would end up walking back with Yuuri to the train station, as if it would simply come to that during the natural course of things, just the two of them who barely knew each other along the side of an empty street.

How strange, Victor would think, that although they didn’t talk much, he would still feel calmed, a rather comforting sensation around Yuuri, in the midst of a silence that enveloped the two of them. It never felt as if anything was expected of either of them to make something up or keep something going. Like he was here and Yuuri was there and the cars would drive by on the other side of the road—and things were fine like that.

Maybe they both understood how draining and exhaustive the night they were coming from was, already filled to the brim with socializing, so they were both eager to follow its end.

So, it would be nice like this.

It was nice just to feel clear and empty and sort of nonexistent for a while without feeling completely alone in it.

On some nights, the cool evening wind would pick up.

And Victor would catch something sweet. It would bring him right back to reality, something ruffling through Yuuri’s hair, to the point that it would soon become a habit to lean himself close to Yuuri, bumping arms, and then eventually right up against Yuuri’s skin once Yuuri would let him.

Victor would be drunk from exhaustion than anything else, claiming he hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going and he wasn’t sure which direction the train station was anymore. He didn’t mind, he doesn’t have anyone to come home to—he’d tried to make that much clear.

And Yuuri wouldn’t answer him for what felt like an hour or more, lost as well, or lost in thought, taking them in some convoluted direction through the city that seemed more roundabout than anything, even though it’s possible to get to a train station from any direction in the city in ten minutes at the most.

-

In any case, it’s years later and this particular white shirt is left to fester on the chair in their room until Yuuri unquestioningly throws it in the wash when it’s his turn to do laundry a week later. When Victor finds it crisp and clean and smelling of detergent in his closet, he’s a little disappointed. But only for a moment.

-

“You don’t think he’s being unfair to you?” Chris says to him whilst nursing a glass of wine at twelve-thirty in the afternoon because he knows how to properly enjoy his life.

“I resent you for even thinking that,” Victor says, his fingers around a glass of water with a single mint leaf in it.

“That would be a no then.”

It’s the first sunny warm spring day of the new year so Chris drags him outside to sit underneath the canopy of a well-to-do café for lunch. Victor had forgotten the taste of scones until today.

“What makes you think so to begin with?” Victor asks, sipping.

“The fact that you always come telling me all this, like you keep casually getting your heart broken every other day but you’re afraid to actually cry about it.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’ve said enough. I would never have known our delightful Yuuri would be getting around this much—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Victor cuts through his teeth, even though he knows Chris doesn’t mean it in that way. “I mean, I haven’t said _anything_ about it.”

He doesn’t know how much clearer he can be. Chris is that mutual friend, they’ve known each other for a long time, even longer than he’s known Yuuri. If there’s anyone who should be on Victor’s side, it should be Chris. And to some degree he is, in some twisted Chris-way.

“I tell you what’s happening, that’s all. But have I complained once? Have I said anything at all to make you think that I wasn’t perfectly happy where I am and have been for some time now.”

“No,” Chris secedes. “You haven’t.” The huge sunglasses perched on his face make it hard to see the degree to which Chris scrutinizes him.

But he leaves it there. So Victor, believing he’s on top of things, tips his glass into his mouth. “There you go, then.”

“Honestly, I love Yuuri and all, but what does he do to keep stringing you along like this? It’s been this long and you haven’t gotten bored yet?”

“I like him for who he is.”

“Which is…?”

“...Uh. He’s a good guy? He’s normal? I could use some normal in my life.”

“Oh, god. _Normal_. Can I say this? I never would have thought you, Victor Nikiforov, who used to bar hop with me until six in the morning, who had a proclivity for suggesting games of strip bingo regardless of the circumstances, who would seduce anyone you lost against to get out of paying...”

“Anyway, how’s your life, Chris?”

“Pretty good, actually. It’s going really well, thanks for asking. You know, we’ve transitioned from pushing our beds together to sharing a single king-sized one. Got it just the other day. Makes things easier that way… the dip ruins things sometimes.”

“Wow, I’m really happy for you.” He doesn’t thank Chris for the mental image that it comes along with.

Victor suddenly feels his phone vibrating in his pocket, using one hand to shield it from the bright sunlight so he can see, and he almost feels a bit of relief when he checks the screen.

“Sorry, let me take this,” he says to Chris, answering it. “Hello?”

“ _Hey, are you busy?_ ”

Victor raises an eyebrow even though Yuuri can’t see it, turning his head towards the street. It suddenly feels like the warm sunlight is getting in his eyes. “I’m surprised you’re calling instead of texting,” he says, since they almost never call each other. They’re usually pretty quick to respond to each other’s texts so Yuuri must really not want to wait long at all.

“ _Is that weird?_ ”

He sounds... odd. He delays the conversation just to say that.

“No,” Victor replies. “I was just finishing up lunch with Chris.”

Chris perks up at his name, giving Victor a coy curling of his lips like he can hear everything.

“ _Do you have time?_ ”

“Right now?”

“ _Yeah_.”

Victor takes a beat, even though he doesn’t even have to think about it, he knows what his answer’s going to be. He checks the clouds’ location in the sky despite there not being a forecast for rain. They’re spread apart in fluffy white splotches. “Sure.”

“ _Great. I’m at this café..._ ”

“I’ve gotta go,” Victor says after he ends the call, to which Chris’s coy smile turns into a full on grin. “From one café to another… jeez.”

“Meeting the darling?” Chris guesses, and somehow he’s always annoyingly right on the nose for some things.

Victor gets up out of his seat, throwing some bills down on the table. “He’s supposed to be on a date right now so I don’t know if he got stood up or what.”

“Ah, so that’s why you’ve been in a mood this whole time.”

“I haven’t been in a mood.”

“You’re so _bad_ at realizing things, you know that?” Chris sloshes the liquid around in his glass. “Anyway, you should’ve asked him. Maybe you could bring him some flowers to make him feel better.”

Victor’s eyebrows knit together. Something like that might be an overly sentimental gesture, but he’s sure Yuuri would appreciate it even as something a friend would do. The image of Yuuri’s face lighting up even just a little, telling Victor he didn’t have to, but accepting them anyway…

“I should,” he considers. “But I won’t.” Because Victor doesn’t want to call Yuuri back up to ask if he actually got stood up, and he doesn’t want to just assume, either.

Chris indicates that he’s going to stay a little while longer to finish his wine. Victor pushes his chair into the table, noting how nice of a day it is, bright, sunny, a nice breeze—too nice to get stood up on.

Truthfully, Chris can read him like a book. Victor knows when those certain things concerning Yuuri get to him, and he can practically feel himself lose composure in time slowed down to a crawl. Some things feel too personal to not get to him. They feel as if they’re pulling inside of him, unwilling to be smoothed over by the usual charm.

“Anyway, sorry for… this.” Victor purses his lips, hesitating just before he goes to grip the top of the chair. It feels like he’s standing up Chris now.

Chris doesn’t spare him a second glance, sighing into a smirk meant to pity Victor and the woes of his lovelife, or lack thereof. “You’re an emotional guy, even more than me, and I’ve always known that. Don’t even worry about it. Really.”

Victor leaves him under the canopy after shelling out another twenty to pay for Chris’s part, despite the insistence that he’s a bastard and doesn’t have to, before heading down the street.

He sees the sign of the restaurant café that Yuuri had directed him to, a small casual place that Victor had told Yuuri he’d be able to get there in about ten minutes.

As soon as he enters, he spots Yuuri sitting in a booth, so he strides over…

“Hey Victor,” Yuuri greets him.

“Oh, hi!”

He registers the high-pitched voice before anything else.

There’s a girl sitting opposite Yuuri with long brown hair, looking somewhat taken aback at first but not entirely unfriendly when Victor approaches them. He can feel it already, coursing through his veins, time slowing down to a crawl.

“Hi…” Victor says awkwardly before reining it in and immediately projecting a smile. He doesn’t know if he’d come at the right time or if he should’ve come in at all. Maybe he should’ve texted Yuuri first to say that he’s here before blatantly walking over.

But his unannounced showing up doesn’t seem to faze either of them all that much.

“Here, sit.” Yuuri moves over, patting at his side of the booth for Victor to sit down.

And without thinking Victor sits beside him, albeit with less grace and more mechanical movements than he’d like, without care for if the girl across would want this or not. There are already half-finished cups of coffee and empty plates with crumbs on the table. He notices Yuuri wearing a plaid shirt unbuttoned at the front that is most definitely Victor’s. And Yuuri’s wearing his glasses today.

Strangely, the girl doesn’t look angry at all.

“This is Sara,” Yuuri tells him, gesturing towards her. She smiles at him from across the table. “Sara, this is Victor.”

“Hey, Victor. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too.”

Victor looks to Yuuri again, who takes another wordless sip of his coffee. He looks rather calm, but also… odd. Like this is exactly the kind of weirdly out-of-character expression Victor pictured Yuuri would have when speaking to him on the phone just fifteen minutes ago. Did he call Victor right in front of this girl? No, he couldn’t have. She didn’t look like she expected someone to show up all of a sudden. Or, perhaps she merely hadn’t expected him to show up that fast.

“So, how long have you known Yuuri?” Sara asks.

He should’ve gotten flowers, after all.

“We’re roommates,” Victor says after Yuuri turns to him to let him answer, mouth full of coffee.

“Oh, nice.”

A big bouquet of them would’ve been good. And then handed them right to Yuuri in front of this girl.

“And friends. We’re pretty good friends now,” Victor adds.

“Hmm, I’ve known Yuuri since… middle school? Or elementary school? Something like that,” she says.

“Middle school,” Yuuri says.

Sara smiles, leaning her arms against the table. “Right, right. We just happened to see each other on the street the other day. But it’s been a long while, hasn’t it? Life gets in the way, I suppose.”

“That’s too bad,” Victor says.

It’s hard to discern just how close Yuuri and Sara used to be back then and how much that carries over until now, or how long exactly it’s been since they’ve seen each other. They talk about everything between reminiscing their old school days to that new song that’s been playing incessantly on the radio, and Victor’s only input is saying a polite no thanks to ordering a coffee for himself. Which might have only made things feel more distant as he sits there with nothing to occupy his hands or his mouth.

“Well, it really was nice to meet you,” Sara says to him once they’ve paid (Yuuri paid) and the three of them are standing around outside the restaurant. Victor puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket, nodding minutely. “Next time, we won’t meet up on such short notice? Get dinner or something?”

“Sure,” Victor says, but he’s ambivalent about whether or not that does happen, or if that sentiment was even directed towards him. He waits for her to go.

“I’ll see you around,” she tells them both, maybe more so towards Yuuri. Yuuri waves at her once she walks off down the sidewalk in one direction.

“She was nice,” Yuuri says, as if he’d also just met her for the first time today. But she genuinely was, Victor agrees. He can’t blame her for not being able to include him much in the conversation when she knows next to nothing about him, and Victor hadn’t felt up to putting forth much effort. He’d had a lot on his mind the whole time, not being able to concentrate on what was being said.

It’s still midafternoon. The sky’s started to gather more clouds in its vicinity, even though Victor still has faith in the forecast not calling for rain.

“Do you want to walk?” Yuuri suggests, nudging against Victor’s arm, against his elbow all the way down to tapping the backs of his fingers softly along the backs of Victor’s. He nods towards a direction that would lead to a park.

So they head off together, walking in silence.

The plaid shirt Yuuri has around his shoulders is made of soft cotton, and it’s big on Yuuri, as all of Victor’s clothes are. But he pulls it off, making it look effortlessly loose and casual. The sleeves hang just past his fingertips. It’s not quite jacket-less weather yet, and Victor worries with the wind picking up that Yuuri might be feeling cold.

They haven’t done this in a while either, just walking, seeing the greenery and the trees blooming little pre-flowering spring buds on either side of them along the park path. Maybe Yuuri is in a reminiscent mood today.

If Chris had been trying earlier to implant an idea into Victor’s mind, it’s nothing that Victor hasn’t already thought about himself. Why should he be killing himself over someone who doesn’t take his feelings seriously—that’s what Chris is asking? Not even that—it’s not even that Yuuri refuses to do anything about it. The apparent question is: why is Victor killing himself over someone who can’t see things for what they are and doesn’t look like he ever will? Why, with every date Yuuri goes on with someone else, does Victor let himself be taunted continuously? He _lets_ himself.

And Victor doesn’t have an answer for that. The seduction of the fantasy remaining a fantasy is too great, debilitating even—is what he would have said to Chris had he pushed Victor for more of an explanation. But really, that isn’t completely accurate to Victor’s feelings, either.

Today, at least more so than before, Victor’s ready to be led astray, taking dips and turns along a dirt road that Yuuri leads to nowhere.

“How was today for you?” It’s only after twenty minutes pass by, walking side by side, that Yuuri decides to break the silence.

And Victor is, to say the least, taken aback at that, on the verge of incredulity. “You’re asking me?”

“Yeah.” Yuuri seems tentative, like he isn’t sure of the protocol for this, but Victor’s quite sure there isn’t any such protocol for the aftermath of unintentionally crashing your friend’s date.

“Fine, I suppose,” Victor says because that’s really all he can say about it. “Is that how all your dates are like?”

“More or less.”

They all get rudely interrupted by some third party? Victor wonders.

“Even ones with complete strangers?”

“Well.” Yuuri thinks about it for a moment. “I don’t usually go out with _complete_ strangers. They’re usually people I know a little bit about already. I would’ve met them somewhere else beforehand.”

Victor nods, feeling like he’s exploring new never-before-seen territory. He doesn’t know what it is that suddenly has Yuuri so talkative about this.

Feeling a little bold, Victor asks, “Are they, uh, usually more… romantic in nature?”

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, if this is only going to be self-sabotage if he gets an answer that he doesn’t like, but he feels like he has to ask. After all this time, it feels like if he doesn’t get an answer now then he won’t ever get the chance again.

But Yuuri only answers a very absent-sounding, “I guess,” which has Victor tilting his head in confusion than anything else. But the way Yuuri says it, somehow unsure but also genuinely disinterested in whether it is or isn’t, has Victor continuing to clutch onto a faint sense of hope that’s started to form ever since the topic of this conversation started.

“Okay…” Victor doesn’t want to go more in depth in to that if Yuuri’s giving him an out to not disappoint himself, so he switches gears to something else. “Have they all been with girls?” he asks instead.

Yuuri hums. “A good mix of guys and girls, I would say.”

“Oh, I see…”

“Would it make a difference?”

Victor finds himself taken aback for yet another time that day. At this point, he’s pretty much lost count. He nearly bites through his lip. “Would… would _what_ make a difference?”

“Whether I went out with a guy or a girl.”

That doesn’t make things any clearer as to what kind of answer Yuuri’s expecting. Victor doesn’t understand. His eyes narrow, squinting down at the dry pebbley ground in front of them like there might be something there to help him.

They’ve gone into a pretty deep part of the park now, where the nicely manicured lawns have started to gather more wild overgrown shrubbery, and the trees aren’t as meticulously cut, the branches left to hang on their own for Victor to have to duck his head out of the way of.

“From… what standpoint?” Victor tries once more.

“I’m asking you.”

Victor kicks at a small rock, having it tumble forward, rolling off the path into the grass. Chris’s words ring back to him about Yuuri being unfair.

“I think…” Victor starts, tentative, getting ready to kick himself if this ends badly, “...it would make a difference.”

“How so?”

Victor takes a breath in through his nose. “Well, if it’s a _guy_ , I suppose things still feel within the realm of possibility, so to speak. Like, if anything, another guy isn’t altogether that intimidating. But if it’s a girl... well, there can't be any sort of competition at all. If there’s something about a girl, specifically about a girl, that satisfies you, there’s nothing I can do to give you that. I feel like I’d have no choice but to back down.”

“You?” Yuuri questions.

Shit.

Victor feels himself heat up under the collar, backtracking. “I, I just mean—theoretically. Hypothetically… from the perspective of someone who'd... want to go out with you...”

It suddenly feels like they’ve been walking for ages, leaving the sun behind them towards an increasingly cloudier sky. Victor has no idea how to get out of the park from here, or how to get out of this line of conversation at all, and he realizes this might have been Yuuri’s plan all along.

“It bothers you.”

The world doesn’t just slow, it stops completely.

And the way Yuuri says that is more of a statement than anything else.

“No,” Victor says reflexively.

He breathes again, this time harshly through his nose. He can’t stop talking. He cannot fucking stop. Not when Yuuri starts to delve into these kinds of questions knowing Victor isn’t prepared at all.

Victor’s afraid to look at him, even when he knows Yuuri’s carried on ahead, physically, staring back at him from three paces away, burning his gaze into Victor’s skin, setting him alight.

“It does,” Yuuri says, sure of it.

And Victor can only find himself defeated.

He feels silly, living his life and falling for a man whose proclaimed ordinariness is nothing but a front—who, in actuality, does the most mind-boggling unexplainable things sometimes. Such a performance of intentionally seeming more boring than he really is is just that: a performance—only outdone by Victor’s own sidestepping answers to sentiments like _what he sees in someone like Yuuri_ being an overplayed _I don't know what else there is! He’s nice and funny and smart and..._

Because, really, it’s Victor who’s the boring one. He doesn’t know of another answer to a question like that, doesn’t what else or who else is supposed to be better than Yuuri, can’t devolve everything Yuuri is into things meant for other people to understand.

Other people aren't Victor and Yuuri, so what could they possibly understand?

He doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know _what_ he would say.

It feels especially offensive—because Yuuri’s the type of person who wouldn't mind flowers and compliments all day every day if it meant he could brush them off just as easily as they come, letting Victor decry day and night all of the insecurities that Yuuri tries to internalize himself with. But Victor can’t bring himself to do even that much. If he were to try to list all of the reasons, every little thing, on why just laying eyes on Yuuri makes him feel happier, brighter, more sane and capable and real—he doesn’t know if he would be able to stop.

If anything, it’s Victor who’s the one being completely unfair.

And Yuuri seems to finally realize that.

“Is it lying,” Yuuri proposes, standing staunch before Victor on the dirt pathway, “if you neglect to tell someone something that would significantly impact the way they thought of you?”

That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it? He hasn’t been truly honest with himself in a long time.

“It is, yes,” Victor admits.

But Yuuri won't blame him. He never does.

Yuuri turns back around, gazing at something in the far distance. Victor feels something; a drop of water might have splashed against the top of his head, but it happens so suddenly and it's so miniscule he's not sure if it really happened or if it was just his imagination.

When Yuuri moves to take a single step, Victor launches himself forward, unthinking.

His fingers clutch into the folds of Yuuri’s shirt from behind. He opens his mouth then closes it again.

“I wasn't going anywhere,” Yuuri assures him, looking back over his shoulder. His eyes are soft, not mad or angry. He doesn’t even look all that surprised at the circumstances, maybe only a little disappointed that Victor had to think that in the first place. He carefully pries Victor’s fingers from his back to take his hand in both his own, just holding Victor’s hand there like it’s important to him not to let go. “I wouldn’t leave you.”

“Oh.” Victor doesn't want to let go of him either, even when every sense in his body is telling him to, that it’s only going to make things harder. Instead, he squeezes Yuuri’s hand back. “Oh. Okay.”

No matter what, Yuuri never could walk away from him, not even when Victor started becoming dead weight on his shoulder, with the directional sense of someone who could barely see the end of the sidewalk in front of him let alone where his life is going.

“Wait, I—umm… I have something to say.” Victor shifts, from one foot to the other, rubbing Yuuri’s hand for warmth like he hadn’t come here at all prepared. But he’s here, and Yuuri’s here, nonetheless.

And, as always, Yuuri waits very patiently for him. “Yeah?”

“It’s about… my feelings.”

“Okay.”

“I really… I always appreciate everything you do—everything you are. And I just wanted to, to say, if you… if I… if we were to ever… because every time someone asks me this, I could never really say much, because I never liked just listing out all of the things, all of the reasons why, you were, to me, someone who, um. I just want you to know, since we’re here and all, if nothing else, that I’m just really grateful. For you. And... I like you. A lot. Um, a copious amount.”

Yuuri stands there, eyebrows furrowing, probably a little bit lost for words, understandably. Victor looks in one direction, towards the ground, and then another. The park around them feels infinitely smaller despite the vast open space, until it’s just the two of them rooted to the spot in front of each other, with nothing and no one else around.

It’s fine.

It really is fine, after all. Victor feels okay, he hasn’t exploded spontaneously or anything.

Yuuri seems calm, maybe just a little bit disoriented. Maybe he’s even relieved that this is all it is and not something catastrophic or apocalyptic in nature. It’s just Victor’s feelings; no big deal.

He never in his life considered he’d get to do this, let alone practiced the words for what would be the most inelegant confession speech ever. His thoughts get frazzled whenever Yuuri looks at him like this. His feelings don’t do a very good job of subsiding.

Not even when Yuuri suddenly snorts, turning into a little bubble of laughter that stays right there between them, enclosed between the willow trees and Victor.

“Don’t make me cry, alright?”

“What!” Victor’s flabbergasted, becoming worryingly unsure of what to make of Yuuri lifting the back of his sleeve to his face while dissolving into laughter. Even though Yuuri’s making light of this, Victor’s very serious. “I would never,” he says. And he makes that a promise.

That has Yuuri calming down at least a little bit. But he still hides behind the sleeve of Victor’s plaid, wiping at his nose. “Also... don’t ever hurt me, okay.”

“I wouldn’t!”

There’s a loud sniff.

“And don’t break my heart.”

Victor shakes his head, vigorously, squeezing Yuuri’s other hand again in silent salute to never do any of those things, especially not that last one.

Yuuri ends up crying right there anyway in the middle of one of his laughs that breaks into a gasping sob. Victor's eyes widen. He's already committed the first sin.

He immediately pulls Yuuri into him after the initial shock, wrapping them both into a tight hug, because his heart feels like it’s going to burst. 

Maybe Yuuri’s saying all this because he doesn’t have anyone else to lecture Victor for him—not one of Yuuri’s dates from the past would come and do something like this in his stead. No, maybe Victor’s reaching a bit with that one.

Yuuri keeps whispering that he’s alright, hugging Victor back tightly, digging his fingers into the coarse wool of Victor’s coat, and lets them both stay together like this. Victor tries to wrap them both in it. He has a hand on the back of Yuuri’s head, leaning close into him, breathing in that sweet scent that has Victor sighing and aching and feeling entirely at home, even in the middle of this dense unfamiliar forest.

“Wait—don’t look,” Yuuri gasps, maneuvering in Victor’s arms to take off his glasses and rub at his face. “S-Sorry. I’m such an ugly crier. They told me... whatever I do, don’t cry. But I—can’t help it.” He sniffs wetly, bringing up both his hands to cover his eyes.

Victor doesn’t want to let go of him. The breath releases from his lips. He shakes his head.

“You are so handsome, Yuuri.”

And Yuuri, tears and all, will have to take a moment to fluster, blushing so prettily after hearing that.

**Author's Note:**

> then they push their beds together and get married and all that jazz.


End file.
